erin, you heard ed, that president obama lost the debate but now the excuses are rolling in. al gore says, no, no, no, he lost because of the altitude in denver, 5,000', and the obama campaign saying it is because mitt romney wasn't honest. they are having a tough time trying to spin out of this. >>guest: they are. another thing that we heard david axelrod say this morning is that the president didn't want to have two candidates on stage insulting each other. that was part of the reasoning for why he didn't bring up bain capital or romney's tax returns or the 47 percent video. >>trace: "politico" had a quote that said there was no knockout punch but a thousand cuts that made obama plead. the question everyone is asking, how much did he bleed. how much did it cost? >>guest: it is hard to say because it will take a long-term, not a long-term, up to a week to she in the presidents. we don't know yet what it will look like in the battleground states. the obama campaign is moving very quickly to make that trust argument against mitt romney through some of their surrogates in state